YMMV / Doctor Who 2015 CS "The Husbands of River Song"

• Broken Base:
  • Even when the episode was announced, the idea of bringing back such a Base-Breaking Character as River Song has caused eye rolls for some fans; such fans felt that her story arc ended with Series 7 or even Series 6. Others were excited to see her interactions with a new Doctor. This trope even extended to the previous two incarnations of the Doctor, David Tennant and Matt Smith, neither of whom were pleased that River was going to be making an appearance with Peter Capaldi. Both of them considered River their companion!
  • The timing of this episode — only three weeks after the emotional "Hell Bent" — led to some disquiet among fans, especially as this was another episode dealing with the Doctor saying goodbye to a woman he loved. The episode also causes issues with those who shipped the Doctor and Clara — something the series itself supported — due to the revelation that during all the time he was engaging in "an old fashioned romance" with Clara (as defined by Word of God - the actors and the showrunner), he was still married to River. The fact this episode establishes that River was married at least twice to other people while still married to the Doctor (the other marriages referenced may have predated her marriage to the Doctor) certainly helped break the base more! Even if shipping wasn't an issue, the frequently melancholic and tragic Series 9 (which had no Breather Episodes) leading into the most lighthearted Twelfth Doctor story yet was enough of a Mood Whiplash to garner complaints about timing.
  • Doctor-Clara shippers weren't happy that Twelve ultimately spends twenty-four years with River. Twelve has lost his memories of Clara; he doesn't know why he once went so far for her. The shippers' last hope is that, perhaps as Twelve's tenure comes to its end, he and Clara's paths will cross again and he will miraculously recover his memories. The Doctor may be luckier, but at the same time his and Clara's relationship wouldn't, and couldn't, be the same as before — she's quasi-immortal and has a date with death that must be met, he's sadder and wiser, and they both know too well their relationship can't overshadow the needs of others. And what if she forgets him? Two Christmas specials later, the Doctor-Clara story came to its apparent end: shortly before he regenerated into Thirteen, Twelve had his memories of Clara restored by the Testimony and was able to bid her glass avatar goodbye.
  • Not all Doctor-River shippers were happy either, given that the episodes put a comparable quantity to certain things. The Doctor devotes 24 years to River, after having devoted 4.5 billion years to Clara. Despite the contexts being completely different, some felt that River came off as the lesser in what ended up being a side-by-side comparison due to the episodes airing only weeks apart (or even minutes for those who viewed "Hell Bent" as part of the Christmas marathons that aired in the US and Canada prior to THORS being broadcast). One thought expressed was that this episode might have been better off being the 2016 Christmas special in order to put more distance between it and the Series 9 trilogy. As it happened, that special ("The Husbands of River Song") softened the issue of River coming off the lesser somewhat: The Doctor left her for good after those 24 years but it broke both his hearts to do so and he went into Series 10 coping with that loss as best he could, with the later episode "Extremis" revealing that Nardole was now serving as his companion at River's request. The novelization of "Twice Upon a Time", Twelve's Grand Finale, also goes into some detail about his loving River so much that it was one reason he initially wanted to die for good rather than regenerate — he had known such happiness with her that he felt he'd lived a truly full life by the time he was mortally wounded.
  • Months after this special's broadcast, the out-of-left-field announcement that Nardole — who was last seen sharing Hydroflax's now-benign body with Ramon at the Singing Towers restaurant! — would be the secondary companion of the Doctor (Bill being the primary one) in the 2016 Christmas special and Series 10 evoked responses of either "Ugh, not him again!" or "Interesting, wonder how that's going to work?" (Turns out the Doctor "reassembled" him; "Extremis" revealed that later River made Nardole promise to look after the Doctor after she died, knowing he needed companionship, a Morality Chain, and someone to kick his butt as needed.)
  • The events of "The Time of the Doctor" are now called into question as the Eleventh Doctor spent that entire episode preparing to die and fully expecting to, and if not for Clara saving the day by convincing the Time Lords to give him more regenerations he would have died. Yet this episode reveals (by way of explicitly retconning a made-for-DVD mini-episode from 2011, "Last Night", in which the Eleventh Doctor supposedly takes River to Darillium) that the Doctor had not released River to go to the Library and her death, a major fixed point event in the continuity of the series — and violating fixed points in time dooms all of time and space to unravel, as episodes like "Father's Day", "The Waters of Mars", "The Wedding of River Song", "Before the Flood" and the just-broadcast "Hell Bent" all make clear. Beyond the continuity issue, this detail doesn't reflect well on the Eleventh Doctor since it suggests he wasn't concerned for River, Clara or the space-time continuum as he prepared for his death on Trenzalore. The fact that it was once again due to Clara saving the day (in this case successfully begging the Time Lords to give Eleven more regenerations) that the universe kept spinning annoyed those who were already annoyed at how powerful Clara had become.
• Designated Hero: River not only steals the Doctor's TARDIS on a regular basis, but a throwaway line reveals that she often erases her current husband's memory. Fridge Horror doesn't even cover the last one, which is Played for Laughs.
• Fandom Rivalry: A bit of one with Arrow fans for preventing Alex Kingston from making an onscreen appearance during a rather important moment for her character, forcing us to simply see the other side of a phone call with her.
• Fanfic Fuel: So what do the Twelfth Doctor and River Song get up to during that 24-year night?
  • Related to the above, the moment where the Doctor finally does send her off to her fate at the Library has been the subject of much speculation.
  • Ultimately, the series offers no indication as to how long a companion-less interval there was for the Doctor between the end of the 24-year night and the opening of the Series 10 episode "Extremis", which establishes how the Doctor ends up with Nardole as a companion, thereby also setting up his decades-long exile on Earth that forms the backstory of Series 10. As such, the opportunity exists for fans - and licensed media such as comics and Big Finish audio - to establish original companions, or reunite with previous ones, with Clara Oswald being a major figure. Many post-THORS/pre-Series 10 fanfics exist to resolve the Doctor-Clara relationship before the events of Series 10 that lead to his next regeneration, though they were all rendered Alternate Continuity by the events of his Grand Finale, which confirmed that he didn't fully remember Clara until just before he regenerated.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Watch Series 7's "The Angels Take Manhattan" after this episode: Amy asks River to "be good" before she is zapped by the Angel. This adventure is set immediately afterwards if her diary is any indication, so River has evidently ignored her mother's last wish as she's planning to murder someone! Sure, that someone is absolutely crazy and blows up planets, but it's still murder nonetheless. Evidently, judging by "Silence of the Library", River doesn't stay like this for long, but she still would have done it.
  • As mentioned in Broken Base, the very existence of this episode puts a negative light on the events of "The Time of the Doctor" as it implies that the Eleventh Doctor would have allowed for a major, possibly universe-ending paradox to occur by dying before he releases River to go to the Library and meet her death in "Forest of the Dead". This paints the Eleventh Doctor in a rather harsh light in retrospect.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Stephen Fry is mentioned. He would later appear in "Spyfall".
• Memetic Mutation: The Sonic Pizza Cutter!^note In promo pictures for the episode, River is seen holding a new sonic screwdriver that looks like a cutter, resulting with fans calling it a pizza cutter. In the Next Time trailer, it is revealed to be a sonic trowel, which the Doctor utterly mocks.
• Retroactive Recognition: Hey look! It's the Taskmaster!

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